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Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Book Review: Nineteen Minutes by Jodie Picoult

Nineteen Minutes
is a novel about a high school shooting, the story is told in flashbacks with
multiple points of views which include the victims and the shooter and spans
back years, days and months. The shooter is not revealed in the very beginning
but it’s pretty obvious who it is but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

I was
intrigued to read the book after I learnt it was from the author who wrote My
sister’s keeper which is has since been adapted to a movie.I thought Nineteen Minutes would be a good
book to read as I had heard many good things about My Sister’s Keeper.

I found
Nineteen Minutes to be a difficult book to read because of its content. It was
sad reading about the massacre, how it affected everyone and the events leading
up to the crime.

The themes
that resonated with me were the bullying and high school social status that was
featured in the book. I thought of my high school experiences and how there
were times when I didn’t intervene when someone was being bullied or said some
mean things about people behind their backs.

I also
thought about how concerned I was in high school about fitting in and not doing
anything embarrassing.I regret how
there were times when I missed opportunities to do things because what I wanted
to do wasn’t cool.

I wonder now
as a future teacher whether I will be an effective ally to a student who is
being bullied and I realised that I won’t always be aware that someone is being
bullied.

Overall, I
liked reading Nineteen Minutes. It was
interesting to read from the multiple perspectives of the crime and their
attitudes towards the shooter.